"Pulitzer Prize-Winning Graphic Novel 'Feeding Ghosts' Receives Surprisingly Little Reaction"

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has achieved a remarkable milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize, as announced on May 5. This prestigious award, often regarded as the pinnacle of recognition in journalism, literature, and music within the United States and second only to the Nobel Prize globally, marks a significant moment for the world of comics.

Feeding Ghosts is only the second graphic novel ever to win a Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which received a Special Award in 1992. In a groundbreaking move, Hulls' work triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing directly with the finest English prose submissions. This is all the more impressive as it is Hulls' debut graphic novel.

Despite the monumental achievement, the news has received surprisingly limited coverage. Since the announcement two weeks ago, only a few mainstream and trade publications, such as the Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, along with one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat, have reported on the win.

The Pulitzer Prize Board praised Feeding Ghosts as "An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories." Hulls' graphic novel, which took nearly a decade to complete, delves into the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations. It follows her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist caught in the 1949 Communist victory, who fled to Hong Kong, wrote a bestselling memoir about her experiences, and later suffered a mental breakdown.

Hulls herself grew up witnessing the struggles of her mother and grandmother under the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness. This led her to leave home and explore the most remote corners of the world. However, she eventually returned to confront her own fears and traumas, a journey she describes as a "generational haunting" that could only be healed through familial love.

In an interview last month, Hulls explained her motivation, saying, "I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this. My book is called Feeding Ghosts, because that was the beginning of this nine-year process of really stepping into something that was my family duty."

Despite the success of her debut, Hulls has expressed that Feeding Ghosts may be her last graphic novel. In another interview, she shared, "I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me. My creative practice relies on being out in the world and responding to what I find there." On her website, she outlines her new direction as an embedded comics journalist, working alongside field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments.

Whatever the future holds for this groundbreaking artist, Feeding Ghosts deserves to be recognized and celebrated beyond the world of comics and especially within.